The only reason Japan allowed Sugihara to assist Jews’ escape ... was to be used as slaves

[wm]

True or false?

The Japanese on the other hand, under the leadership of types like Inuzuka, felt that if the Jews controlled the financial world, then the Japanese in turn would control them. That would ensure Imperial Japan would rule the world with the most efficiency.
This is why I call into question the motives of the man who has come to be known as the Schindler of Japan, Chiune Sugihara.
Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat who spoke fluent Russian and served as the Vice Counsel for the Japanese Empire in Lithuania. He is credited with saving between 4,500 and 6,000 Jewish people who were fleeing the Nazis and Soviets by providing them with transit visas that would allow them to pass through Japanese territory. (This was the real-life version of the letters of transit that was central to the plot of the classic film Casablanca.)

It is my opinion that the only reason Japan allowed Sugihara to assist Jews’ escape from Russia-occupied Lithuania to sanctuary of the Jewish ghetto in Japanese-held Shanghai or to Kobe, Japan, was to be used as slaves by the Empire of Japan.

We should not forget Sugihara served a fascist government that murdered 22 million people during the war in Asia and the Pacific from 1927-1945. Before Sugihara entered the foreign service, he had served in the Imperial Japanese Army in Korea where numerous crimes against the people of Korea occurred. A large majority of the Comfort Women forced into prostitution by the Japanese military came from Korea. As a diplomat in the 1930s, Sugihara served in Manchuria and witnessed firsthand Japan’s crimes against humanity in that region. He gave up his position in 1935 over the crimes witnessed, but continued to serve Emperor Hirohito and eventually became the Vice-Consul of the Japanese Consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania. In this position, he helped thousands of Jews leave Europe as Stalin took over the Baltic States in the summer of 1940. When Hitler took over this area in June 1941, he moved his diplomatic office to Königsberg, Germany; from 1941 to 1942, he became Consul General in Nazi-occupied Prague, Czechoslovakia. From 1942 to 1944, he worked as the Consul General in Bucharest, Romania, another Fascist regime.

So why praise a man, like Sugihara, who loyally served a regime that wanted to use Jews and really did not care about them? Why praise a man who loyally served a regime whose crimes he witnessed firsthand while stationed in Manchuria and did nothing about it? Why praise a man who served his fascist regime by working hard at his duties in Nazi Germany, Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and fascist Romania? Sugihara never tried saving Jews when stationed in these areas. He never spoke out after the war against Imperial Japanese leaders and their crimes against humanity. And he never described why this fascist regime allowed him to issue transit papers to Jews to come to its territory.

Bryan Mark Rigg, author and historian ("Lives of Hitler's Jewish Soldiers", "Hitler's Jewish Soldiers", "Rescued from the Reich", "The Rabbi Saved by Hitler's Soldiers") in "Study of the Holocaust", a private Facebook group.

[jerryasher]

What a bizarre question. Questioning motivations will almost by definition lead to inconclusive response, A question is something that if you get an answer to, it makes a difference.

[adachi]

I have looked over some of Rigg's works and to be frank he is not a historian I would assign much credibility to, especially on his works regarding Japan. At some point he had reached out to me to help answer questions pertaining to the Japanese Navy for him but his hatred towards Japanese people made me feel so uncomfortable I eventually had to cease contact with him. Unfortunately his personal bias against Japan has erroded his ability to properly write on subjects related to Japan in WWII.

[hysteric]

True or false?

Absurd attempt at character assassination! Shame on you for posting this on here.

hysteric

[wm]

Maybe he isn't a historian, I don't know, but he says he is.
He is a public figure; his statement was public too.
What he wrote is equivalent to an astronomer claiming the Moon is made from white cheese, isn't it?
Do you really believe that Sugihara ran a slave harvesting operation for Japan?
Aren't you concerned that he assassinated the character of Sugihara or even his own by peddling fake history?

Don't you think his potential readers deserve a warning especially that his "Hitler's Jewish Soldiers" is so well known all around the world? Please explain.

[Takao]

Maybe he isn't a historian, I don't know, but he says he is.
He is a public figure; his statement was public too.
What he wrote is equivalent to an astronomer claiming the Moon is made from white cheese, isn't it?
Do you really believe that Sugihara ran a slave harvesting operation for Japan?
Aren't you concerned that he assassinated the character of Sugihara or even his own by peddling fake history?

Don't you think his potential readers deserve a warning especially that his "Hitler's Jewish Soldiers" is so well known all around the world? Please explain.

Really...

Given your puerile response of "True or false?" to Rigg's statement.

Me thinks your are just trying to "stir the pot."

[wm]

Yes, really. I've done many such "true or false" shticks already.

[Takao]

Yes, really. I've done many such "true or false" shticks already.

Ok...So you are looking to constructively contribute to this discussion.

Then, what are your answers to these questions?

What he wrote is equivalent to an astronomer claiming the Moon is made from white cheese, isn't it?
Do you really believe that Sugihara ran a slave harvesting operation for Japan?
Aren't you concerned that he assassinated the character of Sugihara or even his own by peddling fake history?

Don't you think his potential readers deserve a warning especially that his "Hitler's Jewish Soldiers" is so well known all around the world? Please explain.

[wm]

The questions were for the person with the cool nick - "hysteric" and nobody else.

[Takao]

Well, now they are my questions to you.

Answers please.

[michael mills]

The assertions by Rigg are of course nonsense, but mainly because he accepts the myth of Sugihara, namely that his main function was "rescuing" Jews from Lithuania by issuing them transit visas to cross Soviet territory in order to reach Japan. The only way his assertions differ from the myth is that he ascribes a sinister motive to Sugihara's actions, namely that he was doing it on the orders of the Japanese Government in order to use the "rescued" jews as slave labour.

Some of what Rigg writes is historically correct. He was an intelligence agent operating under diplomatic cover, and his main function was to spy on Soviet activities, in which function he worked close collaboration with Polish intelligence agents. He was posted to the Japanese consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania, in November 1939, ie after it had come under Soviet domination in accordance with the provisions of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. His undercover role in that position was to observe and report on Soviet troop movements in the Baltic area.

At that time there was a large number of Polish refugees in Lithuania who had fled from the German-occupied part of Poland. Among them were Polish official personnel, including intelligence agents with whom he had previously worked, and he knew that they were in potential danger from the Soviet military authorities who were now present in Lithuania and dominated it. Sugihara began an action to rescue Polish personnel from Soviet persecution by issuing them transit visas to cross Soviet territory and enter Japan. Whether he commenced that action on the orders of the Japanese Government or with its authorisation, or was acting entirely on his own initiative, seems to be uncertain as far as I know.

A group of Polish-Jewish refugees found out about Sugihara's actions to assist Polish official personnel leave Lithuania, and approached him with the request to issue transit visas to them also. After some hesitation, he began issuing visas to the Jewish refugees, and all the indications are that he did that on his own initiative, and not on the orders of the Japanese Government; the real reason why he decided to do that remains unclear, but it most certainly was not to save the Jews from the Germans, since at the time he was issuing visas Lithuania was under Soviet control and there was no sign that it would ever fall under German control.

After Lithuania was finally annexed by the Soviet Union in August 1940, all diplomatic and consular offices of foreign nations in Lithuania were ordered closed, and Sugihara left the country with the rest of the Japanese staff in September, ie almost a full year before the German conquest of Lithuania. He was then posted to the Japanese consulate in Prague, which was no longer the capital of an independent country, since Bohemia-Moravia was now a German protectorate.

The bottom line is that Sugihara's main function while posted to the Japanese Consulate in Kaunas was not the rescuing of Jews, but rather the rescuing of Polish personnel under the threat of persecution by the Soviet occupiers. Accordingly, he cannot have been harvesting Jewish slaves for Japan, since assisting Jews to leave Lithuania and go to Japan was not his main function, and was not something he was doing on the orders of the Japanese Government.

The issue here is not Sugihara's reputation, since contrary to the myth he was not a hero rescuing Jews from the danger of death at German hands. The real issue is the historical truth about Sugihara's activities in Lithuania between November 1939 and September 1940, and Rigg's claims are just as much a perversion of that historical truth as is the myth of the saintly Sugihara, heroic rescuer of Jews.

[mikegriffith1]

The Japanese did not use the Jewish refugees as slaves.

In March 1938, General Tojo allowed Jewish refugees from Russia to settle in the Japanese state in Manchuria, despite protests from Nazi Germany.

In December 1939, Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe, Foreign Minister Hachirō Arita, Army Minister Seishirō Itagaki, Naval Minister Mitsumasa Yonai, and Finance Minister Shigeaki Ikeda decided to prohibit the expulsion of the Jews in Japan, Manchuria, and China. As a result of this decision, about 14,000 European Jews were granted asylum in the Japanese quarter of Shanghai; in contrast, the European quarters in Shanghai admitted very few Jews.

In 1940 Japan welcomed nearly 2,000 Jewish refugees from Poland. These Jews were able to come to Japan because the Japanese consulate in Lithuania had issued them transit visas, while the American, British, and French consulates had refused to do so. To its great credit, Japan’s Foreign Ministry decided to honor the visas, even though they were technically issued without proper authorization. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) says the following about this event:

Following the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, hundreds of thousands of Jews and other Polish citizens fled eastward. . . ; many refugees found at least temporary safety in Lithuania. Options for escape were limited and required diplomatic visas to cross international borders. One route was through Asia using a combination of permits issued by foreign envoys responding to the refugee crisis: a bogus visa for entrance to the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao and a visa for transit through Japan.

One such diplomat was Japanese Imperial Consul Chiune Sugihara, the first Japanese diplomat posted in Lithuania. In the absence of clear instructions from his government in Tokyo, Sugihara granted 10-day visas to Japan to hundreds of refugees who held Curaçao destination visas. . . . By the time the Soviets ordered all diplomatic consulates closed, in late August 1940, Sugihara had saved thousands of Jews over the course of just a few weeks. Because of his efforts, Yad Vashem awarded him the title of “Righteous Among the Nations” in 1984.

The Japanese government eventually transferred most of the Polish Jewish refugees to the Japanese quarter in Shanghai, where there was already a sizable Jewish community. Under Japanese rule, the Jews in Shanghai were far better off than were the Jews in Europe. Weihan Liu:

Shanghai became a popular choice for Jewish refugees for two primary reasons. One is that in light of the economic depression, the looming threat of war and rising Anti-Semitism, most countries had closed their borders to immigrants, particularly Jews. Amidst this hostility, Shanghai stood out as the only metropolitan city in the world that had no restrictions to the entry of foreigners.

The second reason is that the Jews faced no persecution in Shanghai. Anti-Semitism never took root in China and even after Shanghai came under Japanese control in 1939, Jews faced none of the persecution that was characteristic of Europe at that time. (Liu, “Arrival in Shanghai: A Sanctuary for Jewish Refugees (1933-1941),” Sociology Mind, volume 11, 2021, p. 25, available at https://www.scirp.org/pdf/sm_2021011914343144.pdf)

In 1941, the Nazi Gestapo liaison officer at the German embassy in Tokyo, Lt. Col. Josef Meisinger, tried to persuade the Japanese government to exterminate or enslave the 18,000 Jews who had escaped from Europe and who were living in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. The Japanese government rejected Meisinger's requests and never persecuted the Jews under its control.

Anyone who thinks that Imperial Japan was “just like Nazi Germany” should read Israeli historian Dr. Ben-Ami Shillony’s book The Jews and the Japanese. Shillony devotes an entire chapter to documenting the fact that during WW II the Japanese saved thousands of Jews from the reach of the Nazis, over the protests of the Nazi government, and also ensured that Jews living in China were not molested.

[wm]

In 1941, the Nazi Gestapo liaison officer at the German embassy in Tokyo, Lt. Col. Josef Meisinger, tried to persuade the Japanese government to exterminate or enslave the 18,000 Jews who had escaped from Europe and who were living in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. The Japanese government rejected Meisinger's requests and never persecuted the Jews under its control.

Although that's true, is there a source for that he demanded extermination?
As far as I'm aware the Nazis never admitted to anyone that they were exterminating Jews.

[wm]

The issue here is not Sugihara's reputation, since contrary to the myth he was not a hero rescuing Jews from the danger of death at German hands. The real issue is the historical truth about Sugihara's activities in Lithuania between November 1939 and September 1940, and Rigg's claims are just as much a perversion of that historical truth as is the myth of the saintly Sugihara, heroic rescuer of Jews.

Objectively they weren't in danger of death at German hands anyway. At that time in occupied Poland, the Jews were ghettoized but not killed.
Polish elites were exterminated (Operation Tannenberg) but not Jewish. Jewish POWs from the 1939 war were sent home but not the Polish ones.
Many Poles actually believed the Jews had it better than them.

[michael mills]

In March 1938, General Tojo allowed Jewish refugees from Russia to settle in the Japanese state in Manchuria, despite protests from Nazi Germany.

What protests from Germany?

In March 1938, the National Socialist Government of Germany was allowing Jews to emigrate freely from its territory. What possible reason could it have had for objecting to Jews from Russia migrating into Manchuria?

As for Meisinger's protests to the Japanese Government, I think it was more about the fact that Japan was treating Jews in its territory who were citizens of Germany and its allies, and also of other states with which it was not at war, in the same way as non-Jewish citizens of those countries, not interning them in prison camps.

Meisinger was insisting that all Jews in Japanese-held territory should be treated as enemy aliens, ie in the same way as the interned British, Dutch and US civilians. That was what the Japanese authorities rejected, because they did not distinguish between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of a particular country.